A/N: Happy Birthday to me! As my present to myself, here's the first half of the next chapter! The second half will be forthcoming in the next day or two as I add the finishing touches. Thank you all for waiting so patiently; hopefully it was worth the wait!
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Some weeks go by like days. Summer vacation, for example, is notorious for being short, empty, and unsatisfying; its days pass in a haze of video game grinding and sleeping in late. What's that? Riajuu actually spend time with their friends and make valuable memories over summer vacation? Sorry, I've never experienced such a thing.
Similarly, there are some days that go by like weeks. Yesterday was one of those days. Last night I had collapsed into an exhausted stupor, too worn out from the emotional swings of the day and the absolutely brutal sparring practice Cyberpunch had put the dojo through to even think about stockpiling quirks. For once, despite the awfulness of the interview with Mrs. Kakin, my sleep had been deep and dreamless, without any of the nightmares that had plagued me on other recent attempts to sleep without the benefit of Kawasaki's quirk. Mrs. Kakin hadn't been the only interview of the day, just the only successful one; Mr. Saru and Mrs. Ran had been helpful, friendly, equally hopeful to learn about their missing loved ones as Mrs. Kakin had been… and completely unrelated to the Nomu. Part of me felt grateful that those interviews hadn't been as personal or as guilt-provoking as Mrs. Kakin's had been. The other part wondered what it said about me, that I wasn't nearly as affected by the pain and sadness of other human beings unless it also affected me personally.
It was a thin consolation that my reaction - or comparative lack thereof - was probably normal. Heroes were supposed to be better than normal.
But as much as a significant part of me wanted to just go back to bed, warring with my physical and emotional exhaustion was the wonderful, novel sensation of hope. I could train my quirk. Finally, after years of fruitless experiments, I had a good idea of what actually made my quirk stressed. Specifically, analyzing two quirks at once, and comparing them against one another. I had been so focused on my quirk's ability to copy other quirks, so frustrated at my lack of strength at expressing those quirks, that I hadn't realized that other quirk copiers didn't necessarily get the same wealth of information I did when I touched someone.
Now all I needed was someone willing to endure prolonged skin contact with me. "Hey, Komachi, I need a favor," I said, looking up from my breakfast at my favorite little sister. She was still in her pajamas, being the type to not bother getting dressed until the very last minute before she left for school.
She looked back at me impassively for a second, before turning back to her meal. "Do you?" she asked. "That's nice."
Was she still upset at me for not playing outside with her the other day? Ugh. It's not like I particularly did anything wrong, but I'd probably better make it up to her anyways. Maybe I could bring back some autographs from this film set I was going to be at. "This is serious, Komachi," I said. "I need a quirk check."
Komachi's face fell in dismay. "Oh no! I didn't notice anything! Did I start smelling funny all of a sudden? Do I smell? I thought Sami was just wearing a new shampoo and it smelled pretty neat, but if it was her quirk then maybe I wouldn't notice! Or maybe-"
"You're fine," I interrupted. I didn't really blame her for panicking. When she was younger she used to come home from school or a walk through the park with physical mutations that she'd picked up from passers-by. Technically her body only ever mutated in 'positive' ways, but on days when her hearing got more sensitive or she started seeing more colors than the normal human eye could see, having a friendly older brother to walk her through what was happening to her and why had helped keep her calm and helped her adapt to the changes. It didn't come up very often these days - Komachi's body was already so far advanced from the average human's that most of her changes were pretty incremental. "Nothing's new about you that I can tell," I said, "not since you picked up a few minor tweaks from people at the Sports Festival anyway. I mean I need a quirk check for me."
Komachi blinked. "That's… different," she said. "What do I have to do? I can't exactly scan you or anything."
I shook my head. "Just sit there and let me poke you for a minute."
Her eyes narrowed suspiciously even as she extended her hand towards me. "This better not be a prank," she said.
I laid my hand over Komachi's, both of our wrists resting on the table, then closed my eyes. Last night, I'd taken the opportunity to copy our parents' quirks for the first time in a while. It wasn't that I didn't love my parents. It was that their quirks were freaking useless. All my copy of my father's quirk could do was let me save 'profiles' of people I touched and then transform to very slightly resemble them - for example, if someone was 50 centimeters taller than me, I might grow three or four centimeters. My mother's quirk, on the other hand, let me copy a random quirk from someone within a fairly wide radius, but at the same 1/108 power level as everything else. For whatever reason, not only did her quirk scan nearby people, but it also scanned all of the other quirks that I had copied, and gave me a massive headache when it did. Unsurprisingly, I didn't use it often. But given the fact that our parents were our parents, I had my hopes that I would be able to do the same thing with Komachi's quirk that I had with Mrs. Kakin's, and compare it to the stored quirks of our parents.
First, Dad's quirk. I had to forget Komachi's quirk first, which felt strange - it was probably the quirk that had been with me the longest, after all. As I switched to Dad's quirk, I tried my best to once again simultaneously focus on the quirk in my head and the quirk that I was currently touching, hoping to once again get that 'magic eye' effect of the overlap. For a second, I almost thought it didn't work - until I suddenly realized that both my father's quirk and my sister's were distributed evenly throughout every cell of their bodies. It was hard to describe with words what exactly it was like to feel billions of microscopic effects simultaneously; it was almost like my entire body felt like it was made out of silly putty and battleship-grade steel simultaneously. What was worse was the feedback from Dad's quirk, telling me 'hey, you can copy this physical appearance if you want - look! Here's a detailed physical scan of its physical structure!" So while every cell in my body was screaming at me that it should be both more adaptively changeable and immutably fixed to a certain highly-advanced blueprint, I was also receiving messages saying that my arms and legs should be shorter, my hips wider, my muscles made of carbon-fiber instead of protein, my hair ever so slightly longer.
I winced and un-attuned Dad's quirk, recopying Komachi reflexively as I did so, and took deep breaths to keep from throwing up. Feeling dizzy I bent over in my seat to try to make the room stop spinning, then immediately regretted it as the motion brought my face close to my breakfast, filling my nostrils with the suddenly-nauseating smell of eggs. I bit my lip hard to center myself. "Ow, fuck. Should've tried Mom's first," I mumbled.
"Onii-chan. What are you doing?" Komachi asked, her voice tinged with exasperated concern.
"I finally figured out how to train my quirk," I said, looking up and meeting her eyes with a smile. "Well, not so much me as Cyberpunch-sensei, but still!"
Komachi's eyes widened with surprise, and she spontaneously leaned over and wrapped me in a hug that almost wound up being overly enthusiastic before she restrained herself at the last minute. "Onii-chan, that's great!" Komachi said. Then she pulled back and swatted me upside the head. "But no quirk training first thing in the morning, dummy! You have an internship to get to!"
My attention jolted to the clock on the wall. Yeah, it was getting close to time. "I know, I know," I said, hurriedly moving my chopsticks to cram the last few bites of rolled egg into my mouth regardless of how queasy my stomach temporarily felt. "I just... wanted to make sure it really worked, you know? That I wasn't just imagining it."
Her scolding gaze softened. "You idiot," she said affectionately. "Tell me all about how it works when you get home tonight, okay?"
I smiled back. "Count on it."
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The movie that had contacted Cyberpunch was filming on location in Hosu, so practically as soon as I arrived at the agency in Hanamigawa, Cyberpunch ushered me into the car and we started driving into Tokyo. Unlike the last time when we had left for the interview close to midday, this time we were early enough to have caught rush hour traffic. "For crying out loud! Just because your quirk makes you fast enough for the road is no excuse to weave in and out of traffic! Ugh, if we weren't in a hurry to get somewhere, I swear I'd flash my lights and play traffic cop for a few minutes!"
I stared enviously at the man with the teardrop shaped head as his bike darted in and out of the stop-and-go traffic at ninety kilometers an hour. "He's going too fast for the Class II lanes," I said. "If he was in the bike paths that I use to get to UA, he'd be running people over."
"So what?" Cyberpunch said mulishly. "I'm not saying he shouldn't be on the road, I'm saying he should be following traffic laws! Speaking of which-" She slammed her hand on the horn as a white delivery van aggressively jumped into the space she'd been eyeing. "Use your turn signal, moron!" she shouted.
The sky was looking grey and overcast enough today that Cyberpunch had put up the roof of the convertible, so our fellow commuters were unlikely to actually hear her road rage fueled ranting, but I couldn't help but flush with embarrassment anyways. "Did you ever think about getting a muscle license, sensei?" I asked to distract her.
"Nah, I never saw the point," she said, waving her hand around airily as if to brush away the idea. "When I was a kid I…" She flushed for a second, her head jerking in a manner that suggested she was sneaking a glance at me out of the corner of her eye, hidden behind mirrored sunglasses. "So, let me once again reiterate that this is very much a 'learn from my mistakes' sort of situation, but back when I was independently investigating the CRC I wound up hanging out with a bunch of delinquents in order to get information and so on. Technically, for a while I was, uh, kind of a member of a biker gang?"
Yeah, I could totally picture that. "Don't worry, sensei," I reassured her. "I'm not the sort of person who would join a biker gang. I'm way too antisocial."
Cyberpunch snorted in amusement. "So yeah, I never needed it when I was a kid, and after that I somehow managed to get my Hero License, so by that point a separate license for quirk-assisted cycling was unnecessary." She reached out to pat the dashboard affectionately. "I don't think I'd have bothered even if I hadn't been a hero, though. Personally, I've always liked cars. Even if all of the chrome on my arm isn't technically chromed steel, when I was a kid I always thought I'd get, like, a car or a bike that matched my arm, you know?"
"Why didn't you?" I asked.
"I did!" Cyberpunch said, smirking. "Then I got tired of the chrome looking terrible anytime I drove it out of the garage, so it lasted for all of about a year before I switched to a paint job that was a little less gratuitous. Speaking of which," she leaned viciously on the horn. "Scuff my paint and I scuff your face, asshole!" she shouted out the window.
Luckily for my ears and Cyberpunch's blood pressure, it wasn't too much longer before we made it to the film set. The film crew had rented out a warehouse near the location shoot to serve as their base of operations, so at first glance it looked like we were driving into a sketchy area in a mostly abandoned industrial district. The parking lot where they told Cyberpunch to park was full of cars, though, and a security guard at the gate insisted on checking her ID before he let us through.
The set was a flurry of activity as we arrived; men and women wearing headsets rushing around pushing wheeled clothing racks, or with their arms full of papers that I assumed were scripts. Yet as busy as everything was, when we introduced ourselves we were rushed to see Director Konoe right away. The director was a slightly pudgy middle-aged man, clean-shaven, wearing small round glasses and a checkered sweater-vest over his shirt and tie. His white suit jacket was rumpled, his short hair looked frazzled, and as he leaned forward and shook Cyberpunch's hand over the small coffee table in his office his expression was full of obvious relief. "Thank you so much for coming on such short notice," Director Konoe said. "I just wish it was under better circumstances, I'm a big fan of your work!" He shook my hand too as an afterthought (revealing a quirk that seemed like it would protect him from minor scrapes and paper-cuts) but his focus was clearly on my mentor.
"Thanks," Cyberpunch said, taking the compliment in stride. Not that it was really surprising; despite the fact that she wasn't the best known hero out there, she must get compliments like that all the time. "I, uh, enjoyed your work on Blood Sanctuary," she said. My eyebrows rose. It was a movie I'd heard of, if not one I'd actually seen - because I preferred games to movies most of the time, I pretty much only went to the movies with Komachi, and our parents weren't exactly keen on her watching anything with a R18+ rating. This of course meant that I never got to see any of the movies that my classmates were watching, which meant that I never had anything to talk about with them, which meant that I had continued to never make friends who I could go to the movies with. Still, I'd overheard that it was a good movie, so I was getting increasingly curious as to what was going so wrong on set that he had to call Cyberpunch for help. Evidently, so was she. "So, what's going on?" Cyberpunch asked. "You were pretty cagey over the phone."
Director Konoe sighed, folding his pudgy fingers in front of him as he leaned forward. "Perhaps it was overcautious of me, but you have to understand - for this movie to be a success, I've been trying to make sure that as little information about it reaches the public's ears as possible. I want to shock audiences from a new and unexpected direction, and that can't be done if certain facts are known too far ahead of the movie's release date. So, I hope that you will keep everything that you learn here today in strictest confidence."
"That won't be a problem," Cyberpunch said, tapping her foot not quite impatiently against the cheaply carpeted floor.
As Director Konoe's attention turned to me, I nodded in agreement. He sighed, then took a deep breath. "I called you here because our star actress has been receiving… threatening fan mail," he said. "Which of course is nothing unusual, it's the nature of the profession - but it's decidedly not normal for fans to be able to leave those anonymously inside a star's personal dressing room."
"No, it isn't. How long has this been going on?" Cyberpunch asked, leaning forward as well, as if to match Director Konoe's posture.
"About two weeks," Director Konoe said. "Initially, it was dismissed as a prank - our lead is new to the industry, and her participation in the project isn't exactly public knowledge yet, so she assumed that someone was having a joke at her expense. Once it happened a second time, though, she brought it to my attention and we implemented some additional security on the dressing room areas and the set." As he spoke, Director Konoe gestured expansively with one hand, as if trying to indicate that he had locked down the entire warehouse, before letting his hand fall to the table surface, drumming his fingers on it nervously. "Yesterday, however," he continued, "there was a third note - and when security looked around to try to find how the person leaving these notes was getting in, they noticed signs of forced entry on the exterior doors to the set."
I had to admit - as much as these break-ins and anonymous threats were obviously a huge problem for the director, part of me couldn't help but get excited about how completely legit this whole situation was. This sort of situation was the sort of thing most people would only ever see on cop shows - or if they were incredibly unlucky, happening to them; and here I was, with front-row seats. Completely inured to the 'coolness factor' of the whole affair, Cyberpunch steepled her fingers. "So. Why haven't you gone to the police with this? Why come to me?" I blinked. Was it actually that unusual? I supposed it was, but if I were in the position of being about to make a bunch of money for accepting a job, I probably wouldn't be hinting to someone that they could avoid paying me by going to the police instead!
Oblivious to my internal commentary, the Director let out a heavy sigh. He put his hands out palm-up on top of the coffee table like a poker player showing all of his cards. "Frankly… there are a few reasons. First of all, it is… very important to me, and to this film's success, that the details of its production stay shrouded in mystery until it's released to the public. I can trust you not to leak information that you shouldn't; I can't necessarily say the same about every member of the Hosu police force that would come to investigate if an incident was reported here."
"I suppose I can sympathize with that," Cyberpunch said noncommittally, "but confidentiality only goes so far. If I find evidence that your star is in serious danger, I won't have a choice but to inform the police for her safety."
Director Konoe nodded. "I don't think it's gone that far yet, but I trust you - if you investigate, and tell me it's necessary, I'll inform the police myself."
I couldn't help but give Cyberpunch a mental thumbs-up. For all of her cursing in traffic and slightly careless attitude towards things in general, once things came down to business she was a total professional. Sure enough, despite the Director acquiescing, Cyberpunch continued evaluating him calmly. "Okay," she said. "You said that was the first reason?"
"Yes," the Director agreed. "The second reason is that while we did post guards around the dressing room area, it's still … technically possible that the notes were delivered by a member of the cast. Obviously, if all of this were some form of very poorly thought-out prank, we'd prefer to deal with it in-house." So you can sweep it under the rug? My mental impression of the Director dropped a notch or two. He looked uncomfortable saying it, so obviously he knew that giving a harasser a free pass wasn't the right thing to do, but it didn't escape my notice that while he was asking this, the affected actress was nowhere in sight. It obviously didn't escape Cyberpunch either, because she just sat there as the Director continued. "I don't think it's likely," he said, "given that a break-in occurred, but on the off chance that a talent involved with the movie was at fault…" he trailed off. "Well, controversy can occasionally help drive a movie's publicity, but I think we'd all prefer to avoid being quite that controversial."
After a significant pause, Cyberpunch finally spoke. "It sounds like no actual harm has been done so far?" At Director Konoe's affirmation, she nodded slowly. "As long as the actress is willing to avoid pressing charges in the case of an internal culprit, I'm willing to keep it quiet."
Director Konoe smiled with relief. "Oh, I wouldn't worry about that. The actress is very much invested in keeping news of this from reaching the media, as well."
"Oh?" Cyberpunch asked curiously. "How so?"
"Well… you have to admit, me calling the cops because of a so-called 'scary fan' would look pretty lame, don't you think?" A new voice spoke up suddenly from the door behind us. The voice sounded vaguely familiar. Even as I turned to face it, I saw Cyberpunch's head whipping around faster than would have been comfortable on a person with a homomorphic quirk, her face full of surprise. And as soon as I saw her, my jaw dropped too. "Yahello, Shizuka-chan!" Yukinoshita Haruno, clad in the suit and tie of a hard-boiled police detective, said with a wave.
Damn. There went my plan of getting Komachi to forgive me by giving her the star of the movie's autograph. I was pretty sure she didn't need another one.
Cyberpunch stood up. "Haruno. What are you doing here?" She asked, her voice wary.
Yukinoshita Haruno walked in, two familiar faces following in her wake. I was a little surprised to see Todoroki Shoto walking in behind Yukinoshita Yukino, since neither he nor Yukino had mentioned that he was going to be interning with Campestris in class, but I really couldn't blame him for avoiding his father's agency. Like Haruno, Yukino and Todoroki were wearing stage costumes instead of wearing hero costumes. Technically I supposed it was possible that they were just wearing casual outfits out of their closets, but somehow I doubted that Todoroki would wear distressed jeans and a baggy T-shirt, or that Yukinoshita would ever be caught dead in conspicuously-logoed Strike Athletics workout gear, especially while they were both on an important internship. Still, the fact that my classmates were wearing casual clothes and I wasn't was enough to make me feel a little underdressed, and I fought the urge to wrap my cape around myself.
"Such a cold welcome!" Haruno said, putting her hand to her mouth in imitated shock. "And after I deliberately recommended you for this job! That's harsh, Shizuka-chan!"
Cyberpunch let out a dramatic sigh and buried her face in her non-metallic palm. "New intern," she said, gesturing at me with her free hand, then sweeping it in Haruno's direction, "meet old intern. Yukinoshita Haruno, this is-"
I cut her off. "We've met," I said dryly. The 'old intern' bit was a little bit of a surprise, though - I thought Cyberpunch had better taste than that!
"So we have; at the Sports Festival, right?" Haruno said. "I almost didn't recognize you in costume," she said teasingly. It sounded innocent at first glance, but realizing that the last time she had seen me I was running around without a shirt on, I couldn't help but flush. "But we can't skip all the introductions; Shizuka-chan, these are my adorable sister and cousin, Yukinoshita Yukino and Todoroki Shoto. Yukino-chan's going by Inverna, while Shoto-kun hasn't picked his hero name just yet. Yukino, Shoto, this is Hiratsuka Shizuka, better known as Cyberpunch. I interned with her back when I was just getting started as a hero!"
"You mean you interned with me for just long enough to build up name recognition in Chiba, then jumped ship," Shizuka grumbled, but she soon sighed and gestured at the chairs in the meeting room. "Nice to meet you," she said off-handedly to Yukino and Todoroki, before sitting back down and giving Haruno a significant look. "Well?" Cyberpunch said. "Sit down, already. So, you're going into show business? I should have known you were up to something when I heard you weren't patrolling as often."
As Haruno moved into the room, I stood up to give her a spot at the coffee table since it was clear that she was way more important here than I was. I moved over to a couch up against the wall of the room, sitting on one end. Suddenly I saw Todoroki staring at me, realized that I was sort of in his way if he wanted to get past - at least, I was if he wanted to do it without brushing against me - and, rolling my eyes internally, I scooted down to the other end of the couch to let him in.
Yukinoshita Yukino sat down between us. "And here I thought I'd be free of you for a week," she said, just barely loud enough for me to hear. Her mouth was curved up in a sly smile that gave the lie to her harsh words, but I reached up and scratched the side of my face with my middle finger anyways.
"It's been a little tough fitting patrols in around the shoot schedule," Haruno admitted to Cyberpunch, "but it'll all be worth it in the end. That is, as long as the tabloids don't get word of what's been going on here, anyway."
"So what exactly is going on here?" Cyberpunch asked pointedly. "If you're a helpless actress, nervously quaking in her boots at love notes from a mysterious stalker, then I'm All Might!"
Haruno rolled her eyes. "Please. I'm not worried about whoever's writing these little notes; I'm worried about the publicity. You know how the public is, they expect heroes to be able to do everything themselves. Not only would calling the police or someone to deal with this ruin the movie's marketing plan, but it would be murder on my street cred." Now, why did I feel like the second consideration was more important to Haruno than the first? "By calling you, though, even if it does get out that you helped me, I can spin it as a hero team-up."
"Or in other words, you were in a bind, and you decided to call your old mentor for help." Cyberpunch said sarcastically. "If that's the case, why did you have Director Konoe call me instead of asking yourself? Couldn't swallow your pride?"
"No, silly, I wanted to surprise you, of course!" Haruno said brightly. "Besides, it's not like you're ever doing anything important." I couldn't help but grit my teeth. This was taking us away from the Nomu investigation, you entitled narcissist! "Though, it's too bad; I was planning on waiting until Megurin showed up so that she would have more to do on her internship besides getting a movie cameo, but this guy just had to break into the set a few weeks early."
Cyberpunch's eyes narrowed. "Oh, come on, now. You were my intern for a couple years, right Haruno-chan? I'm sure you can't have forgotten everything about being an investigative hero between now and then. I mean, you weren't completely incompetent."
"I'm sure I could have, Shizuka-chan, but you see, the thing is, I've been just a little bit busy with the whole 'filming a movie while also heroing full-time' thing. It's harder than it looks, you know. Although actually? Now that I think about it, since you're here, we should get you a cameo! Helping you pull up that pitiful Hero Ranking of yours is the least I could offer to thank you for your time." Haruno smiled like a shark. "Konoe-san, how hard would it be to add a scene where Taira-kun's mother shows up?"
Judging by Haruno's smug tone of voice, I somehow doubted that 'Taira' was a child actor involved with the movie, and going by the way that Director Konoe's gaze kept flickering nervously between Haruno and Cyberpunch - whose knuckles were looking alarmingly white as they clenched around her glass of water - I was pretty sure he knew he had to step carefully, too. I decided to throw him a line. "So, uh, what's this movie about, anyways? Why the big focus on secrecy?" I asked.
Director Konoe's eyes lit up. "Ah, of course! So, this movie is a revival of the supernatural thriller genre! Except rather than the typical thriller tropes of ordinary men and women unlocking the true power of their quirks out of desperation, this film focuses on the unknowable horror of the occult, and an established heroine's struggle to overcome powers that supercede even the effects of quirks themselves!"
I looked back and forth between the Director and Haruno. What, so she was getting all proud of herself for acting in a schlocky horror movie? "That sounds… interesting," I lied unenthusiastically.
The director beamed. "Indeed! And what's even better is, there are all sorts of supernatural horror concepts which have fallen out of vogue since the advent of quirks! If this movie is well-received, there's plenty of room for sequels - or even a multiverse!" Ah. That explained it. Clearly, the director had delusions of grandiosity, and somehow Haruno had fallen victim to his over-the-top claims. I looked skeptically over at Yukino while the director ranted and raved, but surprisingly she looked focused and enthusiastic about the idea! Wait, don't tell me I was the only one who could see that this was going to be a train wreck of a movie! "Of course, to set the stage for such a thing, we have to go back to the very basics of supernatural horror, with the idea of the revenant. One of the most classic concepts in horror movies, the idea of the unstoppable, implacable immortal serial killer! And what better subject than the original serial killer himself, Jack the Ripper?"
I was tempted to make fun of the historical inaccuracies in that statement and point out that people like Vlad the Impaler and Gilles 'Bluebeard' de Rais had been around well before Jack the Ripper, but I knew from … long experience that once a certain sort of person got a rant started, the only thing to do was to let them get it all out. "Uh huh," I said to show that I was listening.
"So!" Director Konoe said, waving one hand palm-out like he was painting a landscape, "picture this: fifty years after the murders in Whitechapel, a copycat killer surfaces in the Americas, killing to his heart's content, but never caught. Then ten years later, again in France. Finally, in the nineteen-nineties, the killer grows bold enough to slaughter fifty people in broad daylight. He is killed in a hail of gunfire by the police - but ten years after that, in Italy, a new set of murders happen anyways. Decade after decade, sometimes going unremarked upon due to war, sometimes dismissed as an urban legend, the killer returns, always signing his kills as 'Jack'. And, just a few years from today… it will be Japan's turn to suffer, and to attempt to survive, the curse of Jack the Ripper - or, as he was later known for the years he spent as #21 on Interpol's most wanted list, Black Jack."
I did my best to stifle a yawn. Technically, I'd heard worse ideas, but not ones that had actual budgets attached. Making this movie sounded like the shittiest way to spend a few billion yen on something that didn't involve gacha gaming. Despite that, Cyberpunch looked positively excited. "But this time, there are Pro Heroes to stop him, right?" She said enthusiastically. Wow, sensei, your skill at faking interest for interview purposes sure is useful! You're definitely faking. It's fake, right?
"Yes, exactly! Our film will be starring Haruno as the heroine, desperately trying to solve the murders using modern heroic crime-fighting techniques, while her love interest, played by Murasame Taira, plays the civilian occult scholar who uncovers the clue to Black Jack's true motives!" Konoe expounded.
Taira, wasn't that the person who Haruno said - I winced as Cyberpunch set her water glass down on the table with enough force that it made an audible clack. Before my mentor could start yet another passive-aggressive argument with Haruno, I asked, "Who else is in it? Anyone I would know?"
The director stood up. "That's actually a perfect place to break for now, I think. I do have some things to go over the camera crew, and I'm -" he paused for a second to look at his watch, "- already running late. Haruno-san, could you please show Cyberpunch and her intern… Myriad, was it?" I nodded. "Show the two of them around the dressing rooms where the letters were dropped off, introduce them to everyone who would have had access to that area, and so on?"
Haruno stood as well. "I don't see why not," she said airily. "Come on, then. Welcome to the set of 'Tragic Marker.'"
As Haruno said the last two words in gratuitous English, I winced. I leaned in towards Yukinoshita Yukino as we all filed out the door of the meeting room. "Is that really the name of the movie?" I asked surreptitiously.
Yukino blinked. "Yes? Why?"
"… no reason," I said unconvincingly, and kept my mouth shut at her dubious look. If Yukino's hero worship of her sister was so strong that she couldn't see this movie was a guaranteed train wreck, I wasn't about to burst her bubble. I'd let the professional movie critics do it for me.
If the studio had been busy before Director Konoe came to meet Cyberpunch and me, now that he was getting involved in setting up the shoot it looked like things were kicking into high gear. Lighting rigs and cameras on wheeled platforms were being pushed into positions around a mocked-up city rooftop, with a few people being told to stand in different places all around the set for some arcane purpose I couldn't identify at first glance.
"Good morning, Yukinoshita-san!" A young woman called out as we crossed the warehouse. I couldn't help but look twice at her. Short and delicately built, she had light brown hair that perfectly matched the fur on the hamster ears poking out of the sides of her head. And quite frankly, she was startlingly pretty, with an innocent look that could probably give Totsuka Saika a run for his money. Wait, there was something wrong about that thought. Oh, right - Totsuka-chan was the cutest! "Who's this?" The young woman asked, tilting her head curiously at Cyberpunch. "Are you showing some of your hero colleagues around the set?"
"Something like that," Haruno said with an insincere smile. "Shizuka-chan, this is my co-star Manaka," she said. "Just the one name, you know how actresses are with stage names. She plays our female sub-lead. Manaka-chan, this is my former co-worker, Hiratsuka Shizuka."
"Cyberpunch when I'm on the clock," my mentor said snippily, apparently a little irritated at Haruno's casualness. "Nice to meet you, Manaka-san. The Director invited me here to check out a few things around the set. Have you noticed anything odd or out of place on set, lately?"
Manaka blinked, her large dark eyes like clear pools of water. "I, um, not personally? Taira-kun did say part of his costume went missing recently, though."
"Did he say what it was?" Cyberpunch asked.
Manaka shook her head distractedly. "You'd have to ask him, I think. Sorry, I think they're waiting for me on set. Talk to you later!"
As the hamster-eared actress ran off, Haruno tsked. "Just because you're an Investigative Hero doesn't mean everything has to be an interrogation, Shizuka-chan. You should try being a little more personable if you want your Hero Ranking to go up."
"There's lots of ways to rank up," Cyberpunch growled, speaking with her voice low to prevent it being casually overheard. "I prefer the one called, 'getting hero work done.' Maybe you've heard of it?"
Haruno scoffed, her voice dropping to a similar hushed register. "Wow, sour grapes much? Just because you can't handle being in front of a camera doesn't mean…"
I slowed down, letting Cyberpunch and Haruno get a little bit further ahead and out of earshot. Something told me I didn't particularly want to get involved in that particular conversation, and by the way their steps slowed down with me, it seemed like Yukino and Todoroki were in agreement. As we followed our mentors at a safer distance, my gaze settled on Todoroki. I wanted to ask him why he had decided to intern with Haruno instead of his father, but after the conversation we'd had in the halls of the Festival Stadium, I was nervous that the answer wouldn't necessarily be something he would want to say. Instead, I asked, "are you guys going to be in the movie too?"
Todoroki nodded stiffly. "She said it would be good publicity for us," he said, his eyes flicking towards Haruno.
Of course she did. Well, here was hoping that it wouldn't become negative publicity instead. "Did you know that your sister was doing a movie before you took the internship with her?" I asked, turning back to Yukino. "I didn't realize you were interested in the show business side of things."
"... Not exactly," Yukino replied quietly. "She told me she was involved in a big project that would be 'helpful to my career', but I thought it would be another commercial like the one she did for Strike."
It was probably for the best that she hadn't, I mused. Seeing one of my classmates in an advertisement on TV would just be weird.
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"Okay, Battle Fist, Shooting Star, fifteen minute break!" Uwabami called, clapping her hands a few times to turn the music off. I was stupidly grateful for it. The choreography for the commercial wasn't anything complicated, but between the stage lights beating down on us and repeating the same dance steps over and over to get them perfect, I was sweating like it was a Hero Studies class, and not just a commercial shoot. Greedily, I picked up a pair of water bottles from the cooler by the side of the stage, handing one of them to Kendo Itsuka as she approached. "I didn't expect filming a commercial to be so tough!" I said as she took the bottle, then took a couple of large gulps of my own. With a sigh of refreshment, I wiped some sweat off my forehead and asked Kendo, "Did you?"
"Thanks Miura," Kendo said as she accepted the bottle, her face impassive. "And no, I suppose not." As she sat next to me, she let out a heavy sigh.
Inwardly, I rolled my eyes. Kendo had been standoffish and unfriendly since we started this internship. Which, whatever, if she wanted to be a sore loser, it was her choice, but after a couple of days of putting up with her giving me the cold shoulder it was starting to get on my nerves. Even though I kind of felt bad for 1-B, and was totally on board with the idea of trying to make it up to them somehow, at this point the thought of just returning the favor and not caring about her was looking more and more tempting… But that hadn't sounded like a normal exercise sigh, and heroes were supposed to rise to the occasion, so I pushed down my irritation. "What's wrong?" I asked. "You sound frustrated."
Kendo looked at me in surprise, then glanced over at Uwabami, checking to make sure that she had moved off to talk to some of the stage technicians and so was safely out of earshot. As she turned back to me, she sighed again. "How are you not?" She asked, gesturing at the stage. "I mean, sure, getting on TV is nice, I guess, but… I totally feel like we're wasting our time with this, you know? We could be doing actual hero work. "
"I mean… this is hero work," I said with a shrug. "Brand management and publicity are almost as important to being a hero as being able to fight villains is."
"Is it, though?" Kendo asked, taking off her costume's mask temporarily to let her face breathe, then using her quirk to enlarge her hand so she could more effectively fan herself. "I mean, sure, being in commercials and stuff helps us get famous, but it's not like selling fancy hair spray is going to actually make anyone's life better."
"I mean, not directly, sure, but you know the money helps fund the agency, right?" I said. "Heroes have to pay their sidekicks somehow."
"I mean, I guess so," Kendo said uncomfortably. "It's just not really my style, you know? The Hero Association pays heroes who get really good arrest records, or who fight high-profile villains; personally I'd rather do something like that than spend all my time advertising beauty products."
"What made you choose Uwabami, then?" I asked her. "If being a Battle Hero like that is more your style, you should have picked someone like that instead."
"You're right, I probably should have," Kendo said in an overly neutral tone of voice, "but you see, I was so excited when I actually got an internship offer at the last minute that I just went for it. I only got the one, you know? Most of the people in my class didn't even get any. I didn't want to burn a bridge by turning it down."
Oooh. Right. "I see," I said uncomfortably.
There was an awkward silence. Finally, Kendo spoke up. "What about you, Miura?" She asked. "You probably had multiple offers, right? What made you pick Uwabami?"
I had. Not like, a lot, only a handful, but I'd still had to do some research before I could decide. Luckily it had been an easy choice. "Oh, I've actually been interested in the Effective Altruism movement for a while," I said off-handedly.
"Effective Altruism?" Kendo asked.
"Yeah!" I said excitedly. "You know how a lot of big-name charities are total scams? Or maybe you don't, but trust me, a lot of big-name charities are total scams," I said. "Like, if you see an advertisement for a charity on television, out of every hundred yen that are donated to that charity, probably like sixty gets spent on salaries for the people running the charity, and another thirty-five gets spent on the advertising budget, and only five yen actually goes towards helping people. And even for the honest charities, some of them have more money than they can spend on stuff that's going to have an immediate impact. So the effective altruism movement is basically people getting together and saying, hey, where can I donate that will save the most lives per yen I spend?"
"So… like the equivalent of a Hero working in a poor city even though it doesn't pay well, because nobody else is doing it?" Kendo asked. "That's kind of cool."
"Yeah, right now Uwabami is working on-"
"Mosquito nets in Cambodia, ones that can stand up to Quirk-enhanced insects," a voice suddenly cut me off. My head snapped up to see Uwabami, who had at some point come back over. Even though she was smiling at me in approval, my cheeks flushed red with embarrassment at having been caught gushing about her. "Unless you were talking about my domestic charity activity, in which case it's disaster relief and Villain cleanup, but that's more about giving back to the community than maximum effectiveness per dollar spent."
"Um…" I stammered, not knowing what to say. "No, it was, uh, the mosquito nets I was thinking of."
One of Uwabami's snakes reached down and tucked a spiraling lock of hair behind her ear. "I'm glad to hear you're interested," she said. "A lot of heroes these days forget that there's more than one way to save someone's life."
Despite myself, my eyes flickered over to Kendo. She looked a little pale, and I didn't blame her. I didn't think she'd said anything particularly bad, but even being a little bit critical about the pro hero in charge of your internship was a good way to make a bad impression if the hero decided to take offense. Looking back at Uwabami, though, she was smiling glamorously like normal, so maybe it would be fine? Not that it was my problem, anyways."So… break's over, I'm guessing?" Kendo asked nervously as she re-affixed her mask.
"Yes it is," Uwabami said. "I think we have the light levels sorted out now, so this will probably be the final stretch, and then we can get to patrolling," she said. "Now, remember ladies - the tagline is 'easy waves with one quick spray, Hair Spray, Uneri!'"
As we took our positions on the podiums and once more put on our best professional advertising smiles, I couldn't help but feel a little smug. I totally didn't want to turn this whole 1-A vs 1-B thing into a big rivalry. The whole concept was stupid, and only competitive idiots like Bakugo and Hikigaya thought it was a good idea in the first place... but if Kendo was going to insist on the whole rivalry thing, then I didn't exactly mind winning.
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"So, here it is. Personally, I thought it was a little funny that they gave me a personal dressing room almost as big as your office, but I guess they had the space, and having room for all of my hero equipment has been a big help." Yukinoshita Haruno's saccharine-sweet, passive-aggressive sniping at Cyberpunch had continued all the way from the director's office to the dressing room area. It was enough to make me wonder why she had bothered asking Cyberpunch for help, since the two of them obviously didn't get along, and for that matter I wasn't entirely sure why Cyberpunch was bothering to put up with it.
"Well, you know, it just goes to show; there's only so much room that one hero really needs," Cyberpunch said in return. "That giant agency of yours downtown certainly looks nice, but with rents like that it's no wonder that you're having to moonlight as an entertainer just to pay the bills." Except, of course, that she was giving as good as she got. Weirdly, it almost looked like she was having fun; there was a smile lurking around the corner of her lips as she surveyed the room. As I followed her gaze I noticed that it looked like the set managers had given Haruno two of the boxy, modular 'dressing room' trailers that all of the other stars of the show had, and then had removed the walls in between to connect them. So there were two vanity mirrors on the far wall, their frames surrounded by lightbulbs and a desk in front of each; there was a pair of closets on the left and right, one full of costumes for the movie while the other held hero costumes, and the coffee tables and couches of each room had been pushed together into the center to create an impromptu conference table setup. There were even two bathrooms - which seemed excessive, but probably came in handy if Todoroki had to change outfits at the same time as the girls.
Haruno scoffed. "Some of us actually like having partners and sidekicks, Shizuka-chan," she said dismissively. "And some of those people like having actual workspaces of their own instead of being all crammed together into one shoebox. Who knows? Maybe you would actually be able to hang on to talent if you had a real office instead of a glorified gym." She smirked victoriously, then gestured at the room. "Anyway, as you can probably tell, this place isn't exactly what I would call secure."
"I noticed the cheap lock when we came in," Cyberpunch said, her eyes narrowing. "And the fact that there are no windows in here makes it pretty hard for anyone to notice something out of the ordinary from the outside. All someone would need to get in would be a minute or two where nobody was looking." She paused, then gestured out towards the door - or really, towards Todoroki, Yukino and I, since we had come in behind the two of them, but as Cyberpunch started moving back towards the door I took a few steps to get out of her way. "I'm guessing there are either no security cameras, or they're not set up in the right places?" She asked.
Haruno snapped her fingers. "Got it in one," she said. "This big warehouse was too much hassle for the production company to set up a full security system, so they just covered the exits and called it a day. There are one or two security guards that patrol the place at night, but…" she shrugged. "They didn't see anything either. Honestly? I've got a sneaking suspicion the letters were planted during the day," Haruno said. "I'm only on set half as long as everyone else because of my hero work, so it would be easy for someone to slip in unnoticed."
"How does that work?" I couldn't help but ask. "Aren't you the lead actress?"
"There's a decent amount of scenes that follow the male lead instead," Haruno said airily, "but when we start shooting the climactic scenes on location, I'm basically going to have to take a leave of absence and burn vacation time to get the shoot done," she said. "I've already got a Traveling Hero lined up to watch Chiba for me while I'm out of town."
Cyberpunch coughed into her gloved hand. "And at what point were you planning on letting the other heroes in Chiba know about this?" She asked. "This is really the sort of thing you should let people know in advance."
"Oh, once I get the schedule finalized," Haruno said. "You know how these things are. Filming can be so unpredictable." She smiled like butter wouldn't melt in her mouth.
"And you don't want anybody scheduling publicity events in town while you're not there to take advantage of them," Cyberpunch said cynically. "Typical."
Haruno's smug grin, if possible, got even more self-satisfied. "What can I say? Success comes with a price. I'm hardly ignorant of the fact that there are nobody heroes out there who would love to use me to boost their own careers."
"Wow. When you put it that way, I can hardly imagine why anybody would want to send you death threats," Cyberpunch said dryly.
Haruno snorted, but instead of replying, walked over to a safe set into the wall of the 'hero' side of the room. Unlike the rest of the decor, the safe looked sturdy, and fairly high-tech. With deft movements, Haruno keyed in a PIN on the faceplate, then pressed her thumb against the latch. As it clicked open, she reached over to grab a set of what looked like ordinary kitchen tongs, then reached in to pull out a folded up piece of paper with them. "Speaking of which, I wound up tossing the first of these little notes into the garbage, and the second one has been passed around to a few people, but when I got the third one I put it into the safe with my critical hero gear. A metal safe is basically the same thing as a Faraday cage as far as psychic shielding goes, right?" She asked, holding it out towards Cyberpunch.
"Seems like you didn't forget everything you learned working for me, after all," Cyberpunch said, stripping the glove off of her right hand. "So, let's see if whoever sent it was actually serious, or if this is just a case of you being as unpopular with your movie coworkers as you are with your fellow heroes." As she said it, her metallic fingers closed around the letter - and suddenly, in a convulsive motion, released it, letting it fall on the floor. "Sonofa-" she said, and stepped back with a hint of superhuman speed into a combat posture, staring at the letter like it was a live scorpion. "-Fuck!"
I couldn't help but stare. For all that she was quick to anger, and far more willing to indulge in catty arguments than I had expected, this was the first time I had seen my mentor lose her composure quite so thoroughly. "Are you okay?" I asked her.
After a second, though, she sheepishly stood back up into a more normal posture, vigorously rubbing her metallic palm against the fabric of her white trench coat with disgust. "That's the real thing, alright."
"That's -" Haruno broke off, disconcerted. Suddenly, I noticed that all five of us in the room were just standing around in a circle, all staring at a folded piece of paper in the middle of the floor. It probably would have looked funny, if seen from an outside perspective, but from where I stood the atmosphere in the dressing room was tense enough that I could practically cut the air with a knife. "That's… really not what I was expecting," Haruno said slowly. "There's no chance you're just pranking me, right?"
"I wish," Cyberpunch said as she leaned down and reluctantly picked the paper back up. I watched with fascination as the spiky fins on her metallic arm subtly flexed and opened up to better vent heat as she focused her full attention on the deceptively harmless-looking piece of stationery. "This thing is so drenched with negative emotions that I'm surprised you can't see it," she said grimly. "...Too many negative emotions, actually."
After a second where no-one spoke, I opened my mouth. "How so?" I asked.
Still frowning in concentration, Cyberpunch waved her free hand. "Whoever wrote this wasn't just feeling angry and resentful," she said. "Or even just feeling negative emotions, for that matter. I'm getting frustration, jealousy, injured pride, admiration, romantic infatuation… and not much in the way of hatred, now that I'm 'listening' closely."
Haruno snorted in derision. "See, I was right. It's not a death threat, it's just a love letter from a crazy person. And here I was afraid it was actually going to be a big deal."
"Onee-san!" Yukino exclaimed disapprovingly. "You're not really going to dismiss this, are you?"
Yukino wasn't the only one to react strongly to her statement; Todoroki also stepped forward. "You don't have to hate someone to wind up hurting them," he said grimly. I couldn't help but stare at the ruined flesh over his left eye. "If whoever is writing these letters is really unwell, you should be cautious."
Haruno raised her hands in a pacifying gesture at Yukino and Todoroki, but any response she might have had was cut off by my mentor clearing her throat. "The good news is, anyone whose mind is this unsettled should be fairly easy for me to pick out," Cyberpunch said. "Do you have any clues as to who the culprit could be?"
"No offense, Shizuka-chan, but if I had anything like that I wouldn't have had to call you in," Haruno said blithely. "The 'love letters' I've been getting haven't exactly been signed or anything. No fingerprints, either, though even if I did dust them for prints it's hardly as though I could just demand that all of my co-stars submit to a background check."
"There's always the old water bottle trick," Cyberpunch said off-handedly, "but then again, you left the agency before you could handle any real investigations, so it's hardly a surprise you didn't think of that one. So, the next question," she said, opening up the folded letter to take a look at it, "is just how bad is this letter that you had to call me about it? Let's see… My Bloody Angel," she read in a stilted voice, holding out the letter at arms' length in front of her. "Every day I see you, my heart grows fonder. You don't know that I'm watching you, but every movement of your lithe and supple frame sends me into confusion. I love that you are no mere blushing maiden, that you battle fiercely and bravely. The more that I watch you fight, the more that I want to see it, see you serious, smiling bravely through bloodied teeth, Valkyrie and Valentine." She paused, taking her gaze away from the letter. I cringed in sympathy for the author. Psycho obsessed fan or no, nobody deserved to have their love letters read aloud in that tone of clinical sarcasm. "It definitely reads like it was written by someone mentally disturbed," Cyberpunch said, a trace of black humor in her voice. "Know anyone who fits the bill?"
Haruno shrugged expansively, seemingly apathetic in the face of the threatening 'romantic' drivel. "Who really knows, with actors?" She said, mock nonchalance in her voice. "Everyone's hiding something, around here. It's even dirtier than the hero industry, and that's saying something."
"Even for a cowardly tactic like an anonymous love letter, that's impressively vile," Yukino said, the naked disgust on her face warring with the concern in her eyes as she looked at her sister. "Nee-san, you didn't say it was this bad!" Oi, don't tar all anonymous love letters with the same brush! Sure, faking a love letter to threaten someone is cowardly and creepy, but sending a love letter anonymously under normal circumstances is - well, not that I'd know, never having done such a thing, of course. But it was romantic, right? … Right? "But just going off of the … borderline homicidal language used," Yukino continued, sounding as though she had come to a sudden realization, "I find it hard to believe that the author could hide that kind of emotion perfectly. Nee-san, haven't you been complaining that Hiru-san has been acting strangely aggressively on set?"
"Who's Hiru?" Cyberpunch asked, raising one eyebrow.
Haruno looked at Yukino with irritation before turning to Cyberpunch. "One of my co-stars, Hiru Cain; he's our Jack the Ripper. As you might imagine, since I'm the hero and he's the villain, we have a few fight scenes," she said. "And he's been going at them pretty seriously. You could say that he's taking them more seriously than the situation really warrants, but he's overly hostile and aggressive towards everyone, though, not just me. Since everyone else on set is on the sides watching us fight, the love letter going on about me being a 'bloody angel' is a flimsy piece of evidence against him at best."
Something about the way Yukino had spoken up bothered me. "What's your real reason for singling him out?" I asked her. "You've met Bakugo, someone being a little fight-happy doesn't seem like it would make you jump to a conclusion right away."
Yukino gave me a hint of a smile, but even as she did, her right arm reached across her body to grab her elbow in an unconscious gesture of defensiveness. "Hiru-san… doesn't seem like he's acting, when he goes on set to play Jack the Ripper. Or rather, he reminds me of some of the Villains we fought at the USJ. His body language, the way he glares at people - even off set, he moves like a dangerous person."
"I heard a rumor that he was a villain from overseas," Todoroki added. At my curious look, he added, "It didn't seem reliable at the time," as if to explain why he hadn't brought it up before now.
"That one is actually true," Haruno said matter-of-factly. "Director Konoe wanted to film realistic action scenes, so all of the main actors of the film have hero or villain experience. My co-star, Murasame Taira, was a small-time gangster before he turned his life around. Director Konoe even went so far as to bring Cain-san all the way from England, just to make sure the action was, quote, 'authentic', unquote."
"Well, that certainly sounds promising," Cyberpunch said, raising one eyebrow. "Who knows, maybe this will be an easy case. What does this Hiru Cain's criminal record look like?" Cyberpunch asked.
Haruno sighed. "I don't know," she admitted. "I tried looking him up in the Interpol database, but I'm pretty sure 'Cain Heel' is a pseudonym, and he hasn't used his Quirk on set so I haven't been able to look him up based on that, either. Whoever he is, he's a trained fighter, though - he was able to hold his own against me in pure hand-to-hand."
I cleared my throat. "I could theoretically help with that Quirk problem," I offered.
Cyberpunch frowned. "Let's call that Plan D," she said noncommittally. "There are a lot of other options on the table that don't wind up with me explaining to the Hero Commission why I let my not-yet-licensed intern get within arms' reach of a potentially dangerous villain." She turned to Haruno. "Any particular reason you're inclined not to suspect him?" She asked. "While I wouldn't necessarily put it past you not to share your own thoughts or suspicions with me on a case, I'd only expect it when you're being an insufferable glory hound. Like you said earlier, if you already had a suspect in mind you wouldn't have called me."
"Why can't I just be trying to avoid prejudicing your investigation?" Campestris asked rhetorically. "No, you're right. Cain-san might be a creep, but he has Director Konoe's personal trust… and he's got a minder, 24/7. Her name is supposedly Hiru Setsuna, and she's supposedly his sister here to help him translate from Japanese to English, but that bastard speaks Japanese just fine. I don't know if she's meant to keep him out of trouble, or if part of Cain's deal with the director is that he gets to keep his girlfriend on set with him, but either way it'd be hard for him to sneak around and leave love notes in my dressing room with someone else watching him all the time."
"But not impossible," Cyberpunch said thoughtfully. "I'll want to finish looking at all the physical evidence before I start in on interviews," she said, "but once I'm done checking the site of the break-in, this 'Hiru Cain' is first on the list."
"I'll let Director Konoe know," Haruno agreed, before pausing for a long moment. "If that note does turn out to have been written by Hiru-san, talk to the Director before you do anything rash. He's as important to this movie as I am, possibly more. Having to re-shoot practically the whole movie because one of our stars got arrested is the last thing we need." Oh, sure, just ignore the pseudo-death threats, money and fame are at stake!
Apparently just as underwhelmed as I was, Cyberpunch set the note down on the dressing table and looked at Haruno impassively. "Like I already told the director - that depends on what else I find."